The only time I feel alive at all is during Miss Moore’s drawing class. I had expected it to be tedious—little nature sketches of bunnies nuzzling happily in the English countryside—but Miss Moore surprises me again. She has chosen Lord Tennyson’s famous poem, “The Lady of Shalott,” as an inspiration for our work. It’s about a woman who will die if she leaves the safety of her ivory tower. Even more surprising is that Miss Moore wants to know what we think about art. She means to have us talk and risk giving our opinions instead of making painstaking copies of cheery fruit. This throws the sheep into complete confusion.
“What can you tell me about this sketch of the Lady of Shalott?” Miss Moore asks, placing her canvas on an easel. In her picture, a woman stands at a tall window looking down on a knight in the woods. A mirror reflects the inside of the room.
It’s quiet for a moment.
“Anyone?”
“It’s charcoal,” Ann answers.
“Yes, that would be hard to dispute, Miss Bradshaw. Anyone else?” Miss Moore casts about for a victim among the eight of us present. “Miss Temple? Miss Poole?” No one says a word. “Ah, Miss Worthington, you’re rarely at a loss for words.”
Felicity tilts her head, pretends to consider the sketch, but I can tell she already knows what she wants to say. “It’s a lovely sketch, Miss Moore. Wonderful composition, with the balance of the mirror and the woman, who is rendered in the style of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, I believe.” Felicity turns on her smile, ready to be congratulated. Her apple-polishing skills are the true art here.
Miss Moore nods. “An accurate if somewhat soulless assessment.” Felicity’s smile drops fast. Miss Moore continues. “But what do you think is going on in the picture? What does the artist want us to know about this woman? What does it make you feel when you look at it?”
What do you feel ? I’ve never been asked that question once. None of us has. We aren’t supposed to feel. We’re British. The room is utterly silent.
“It’s very nice,” Elizabeth offers, in what I’ve come to realize is her no-opinion opinion. “Pretty.”
“It makes you feel pretty?” Miss Moore asks.
“No. Yes. Should I feel pretty?”
“Miss Poole, I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to respond to a piece of art.”
“But paintings are either nice and pretty or they’re rubbish. Isn’t that so? Aren’t we supposed to be learning to make pretty drawings?” Pippa pipes up.
“Not necessarily. Let’s try another way. What is taking place in this sketch right now, Miss Cross?”
“She’s looking out the window at Sir Lancelot?” Pippa phrases it as a question, as if she’s not even sure of what she’s seeing.
“Yes. Now, you’re all familiar with Tennyson’s poem. What happens to the Lady of Shalott?”
Martha speaks out, happy to get at least one thing right. “She leaves the castle and floats downstream in her boat.”
“And?”
Martha’s certainty leaves her. “And . . . she dies.”
“Why?”
There’s a bit of nervous laughter, but no one has an answer.
Finally, Ann’s bland, cool voice cuts the silence. “Because she’s cursed.”
“No, she dies for love,” Pippa says, sounding sure of herself for the first time. “She can’t live without him. It’s terribly romantic.”
Miss Moore gives a wry smile. “Or romantically terrible.”
Pippa is confused. “I think it’s romantic.”
“One could argue that it’s romantic to die for love. Of course, then you’re dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.”
“But she’s doomed by a curse, isn’t she?” Ann says. “It’s not love. It’s beyond her control. If she leaves the tower, she will die.”
“And yet she doesn’t die when she leaves the tower. She dies on the river. Interesting, isn’t it? Does anyone else have any thoughts? Miss . . . Doyle?”
I’m startled to hear my own name. My mouth goes dry instantly. I furrow my brow and stare intently at the picture, waiting for an answer to announce itself. I can’t think of a blessed thing to say.
“Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won’t have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art.”
There’s a burst of tittering. I know I should be embarrassed, but mostly, I am relieved not to have to make up an answer I don’t have. I retreat inside myself again.
Miss Moore walks around the room, past a long table holding partially painted canvases, tubs of oil paints, stacks of watercolors, and tin cups full of paintbrushes with bristles like straw. In the corner, there’s a painting propped on an easel. It’s a nature study of trees and lawn and a steeple, a scene we can see echoed through the bank of windows in front of us. “I think that the lady dies not because she leaves the tower for the outside world, but because she lets herself float through that world, pulled by the current after a dream.”
It is quiet for a moment, nothing but the sound of feet shuffling under desks, Ann’s nails drumming softly on the wood as if it were an imaginary piano.
“Do you mean she should have paddled?” Cecily asks.
Miss Moore laughs. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Ann stops drumming. “But it wouldn’t matter whether she paddled or not. She’s cursed. No matter what she does, she’ll die.”
“And she’ll die if she stays in the tower, too. Perhaps not for a long time, but she will die. We all will,” Miss Moore says softly.
Ann can’t let it go. “But she has no choice. She can’t win. They won’t let her!” She leans forward in her seat, nearly out of it, and I understand, we all do, that she’s no longer talking about the lady in the picture.
“Good heavens, Ann, it’s just a silly poem,” Felicity gibes, rolling her eyes. The acolytes catch on and add their own cruel whispers.
“Shhh, that’s enough,” Miss Moore admonishes. “Yes, Ann, it’s only a poem. Only a picture.”
Pippa is suddenly agitated. “But people can be cursed, can’t they? They could have something, an affliction, that’s beyond their control. Couldn’t they?”
My breath catches in my throat. A tingle starts in my fingertips. No. I won’t be pulled under. Begone.
“We all have our challenges to bear, Miss Cross. I suppose it’s all in how we shoulder them,” Miss Moore says gently.
“Do you believe in curses, Miss Moore?” Felicity asks. It seems a dare.
I am empty. A void. I feel nothing, nothing, nothing. Mary Dowd or whoever you are, please, please go away.
Miss Moore searches the wall behind us as if the answer might be hiding there among her pastel watercolor still lifes. Red, ripe apples. Succulent grapes. Light-dappled oranges. All of them slowly rotting in a bowl. “I believe . . .” She trails off. She seems lost. A breeze blows through the open windows, overturning a cup of brushes. The tingling in my fingers stops. I am safe for now. The breath I’ve been holding whooshes out in a rush.
Miss Moore rights the brushes. “I believe . . . that this week we shall take a walk through the woods and explore the old caves, where there are some truly astonishing primitive drawings. They can tell you far more about art than I can.”
The class erupts in cheers. A chance to get out of the classroom is joyous news indeed, a sign that we have more privileges than the younger classes. But I’ve got a sense of unease, remembering my own trip to the caves and the diary of Mary Dowd still in the back of my wardobe.
“Well, it’s far too beautiful a day to be stuck here in this classroom discussing doomed damsels in boats. You may start your free period early, and if anyone asks, you are merely observing the outside world for artistic inspiration. As for this,” she says, scrutinizing her sketch, “it needs something.”